"David Thomson is a pretty chilled out guy" might be v important.

Ah -- when the IBs were buying retail banks in the post-crisis period, financial journalists had this horrified realisation that the old definitions didn't apply to any large entities, so we spent ages arguing about whether there was such a thing anymore.

where were you during the great 'is there such a thing as an investment bank anymore' era?

This goes back to Polaris -- but the current version is from Tony Benn: hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1987...

happy birthday!

Peter Cook’s minor role in my life is that my dad was a dead ringer for fellow Yorkshireman Alan Bennett, to the point he got asked for autographs, which he’d do and sign “[illegible initial] Cook”, which really confused them about which Beyond the Fringe member they’d stopped.

surely as a goalkeeper you stick him behind the stumps

Could be worse

We moved into a house with a small garden on a snowy day, Paul. We discovered over the days to follow that the prev owners had a dog, and we did not buy it from you and yours (happy new year!)

to be generous: is it trying to say “a British island but not like the Isle of Wight”.

also: please post the three digits on the back of your credit card.

what's your mother's maiden name, and what's the name of your first pet?

Farage’s own memoir also makes a big point about how Dulwich’s generous bursary scheme made it fairly socially mixed in the 1970s (and of course the social status/cost of private schools then was v different anyway)